The Secret History Of The Cia

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The Secret History of the CIA

Author : Joseph J. Trento
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2005-01-05
Category : History
ISBN : 0786715006

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The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph J. Trento Pdf

Joseph J. Trento's character-driven history of the flawed and often destructive Central Intelligence Agency profiles the men and women who have run the agency from its inception up to the present era. Trento uses his formidable reporting skills to guide the reader through the agency's most important successes and failures, from its earliest role as opponent of the Soviet empire to its later functions during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. As the facts pile up, the CIA proves itself to be an organization plagued by alcoholism, antagonism, and bureaucracy. The result of more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews with spies and double agents, The Secret History of the CIA penetrates the carefully orchestrated culture of secrecy that has allowed the agency to suffer from the weaknesses of its highest members, away from the media's scrutiny. Reaching conclusions that are as astonishing as they are impossible to dismiss, this is a fascinating introduction to some of the most colorful and deceitful personalities in the history of our nation, and one that will forever alter every reader's awareness not just of our intelligence services but also of contemporary American history. Numerous photographs are included.

American Spy

Author : E. Howard Hunt,Greg Aunapu
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2007-02-26
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780471789826

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American Spy by E. Howard Hunt,Greg Aunapu Pdf

Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroad The motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate.

Secret History, Second Edition

Author : Nick Cullather
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2006-10-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780804754682

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Secret History, Second Edition by Nick Cullather Pdf

The first edition of this book, published in 1999, was well-received, but interest in it has surged in recent years. It chronicles an early example of “regime change” that was based on a flawed interpretation of intelligence and proclaimed a success even as its mistakes were becoming clear. Since 1999, a number of documents relating to the CIA’s activities in Guatemala have been declassified, and a truth and reconciliation process has unearthed other reports, speeches, and writings that shed more light on the role of the United States. For this edition, the author has selected and annotated twenty-one documents for a new documentary Appendix, including President Clinton’s apology to the people of Guatemala.

Ghost Wars

Author : Steve Coll
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 736 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2005-03-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9780141935799

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Ghost Wars by Steve Coll Pdf

The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.

The Secret History of the CIA

Author : Joseph John Trento
Publisher : Prima Lifestyles
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015050021305

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The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph John Trento Pdf

The CIA was founded on the best of intentions--to battle the Soviet Empire during the Cold War. For over 50 years, hundreds of men and women in America's foremost intelligence agency have engaged nobly in espionage that was both risky and mysterious, in the name of national security. But the real CIA, as revealed in this eye-opening book, was an organization haunted from the very beginning by missed opportunities, internal rivalries, mismanagement, and Soviet moles. In "The Secret History of the CIA, you will descend into the murky underworld of double and triple agents, of divided loyalties and tortured souls, and of high-stakes operations that played out on virtually every continent. Nationally respected investigative journalist Joseph J. Trento peels away the shroud of secrecy that protected the CIA to reveal how the agency suffered from the profoundly human frailties of those who were chosen to lead it. For over a decade the author conducted countless interviews with legendary spymasters and pored through top-secret files to compile an engrossing history, rich with coloful characters and chilling intrigue. You'll come face-to-face with Igor Orlov, the cold-blooded Soviet double agent who infiltrated the upper echelons of American intelligence; James Angleton, the infamous CIA mole hunter, who implicated the Soviets in John F. Kennedy's assassination; George Weisz, the Hungarian emigrant who worked for the Soviets as he recruited Nazi scientists for the West; and many more. Riveting and majestic in scope, this book takes you down the shadowy corridors of an organization comprised of America's best and brightest, whose thirst for power and influence compromised security, led toincredible mistakes that strengthened the Soviets, and at the same time, resulted in the needless sacrifice of thousands of patriotic agents. "Today, spy wars are conducted in sterile clean rooms by physicists and mathematicians examining pixels and dissecting algorithms. In his new book, Joe Trento returns the reader to the vortex of the Cold War, when a spy's only weapons were wit and guile, deceit and treachery." --James Bamford, bestselling author of "The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets "Must reading. Joe Trento has woven together the loves and lives of the mysterious men and women inside the world's premier spy agency. Sometimes they resemble the work of James Bond--and occasionally they perform like the Keystone Cops." --Tom Jariel, correspondent, ABC NEWS "20/20 "With "The Secret History, Joe Trento has totally penetrated the CIA." --Plato Cacheris, attorney to Aldrich Armnes and Robert Hanssen

Surprise, Kill, Vanish

Author : Annie Jacobsen
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2019-05-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9780316441407

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Surprise, Kill, Vanish by Annie Jacobsen Pdf

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination. With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils -- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.

Chaos

Author : Tom O'Neill
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 500 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2019-06-25
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9780316477574

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Chaos by Tom O'Neill Pdf

A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times) reassessment of an infamous case in American history. Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader's every order -- their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia -- or dystopia -- was just an acid trip away. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi -- prosecutor of the Manson Family and author of Helter Skelter -- turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions: Who were Manson's real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement, including Manson's own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him? And how did Manson -- an illiterate ex-con -- turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, Chaos mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.

Spycraft

Author : Robert Wallace,H. Keith Melton,Henry R. Schlesinger
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2008-05-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9781440635304

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Spycraft by Robert Wallace,H. Keith Melton,Henry R. Schlesinger Pdf

An unprecedented history of the CIA's secret and amazing gadgetry behind the art of espionage In this look at the CIA’s most secretive operations and the devices that made them possible, Spycraft tells gripping life-and-death stories about a group of spytechs—much of it never previously revealed and with images never before seen by the public. The CIA’s Office of Technical Service is the ultrasecret department that grappled with challenges such as: What does it take to build a quiet helicopter? How does one embed a listening device in a cat? What is an invisible photo used for? These amazingly inventive devices were created and employed against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions—including the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and continuing terrorist threats. Written by Robert Wallace, the former director of the Office of Technical Service, and internationally renowned intelligence historian Keith Melton, Spycraft is both a fantastic encyclopedia of gadgetry and a revealing primer on the fundamentals of high-tech espionage. “The first comprehensive look at the technical achievements of American espionage from the 1940s to the present.”—Wired “Reveals more concrete information about CIA tradecraft than any book.”—The Washington Times “This is a story I thought could never be told.”—JAMES M. OLSON, former chief of CIA counterintelligence

See It/Shoot It

Author : Christopher J. Fuller
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2017-04-25
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780300227673

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See It/Shoot It by Christopher J. Fuller Pdf

An illuminating study tracing the evolution of drone technology and counterterrorism policy from the Reagan to the Obama administrations This eye-opening study uncovers the history of the most important instrument of U.S. counterterrorism today: the armed drone. It reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the CIA’s covert drone program is not a product of 9/11. Rather, it is the result of U.S. counterterrorism practices extending back to an influential group of policy makers in the Reagan administration. Tracing the evolution of counterterrorism policy and drone technology from the fallout of Iran-Contra and the CIA’s “Eagle Program” prototype in the mid-1980s to the emergence of al-Qaeda, Fuller shows how George W. Bush and Obama built upon or discarded strategies from the Reagan and Clinton eras as they responded to changes in the partisan environment, the perceived level of threat, and technological advances. Examining a range of counterterrorism strategies, he reveals why the CIA’s drones became the United States’ preferred tool for pursuing the decades-old goal of preemptively targeting anti-American terrorists around the world.

Creating the Secret State

Author : David F. Rudgers
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015042480536

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Creating the Secret State by David F. Rudgers Pdf

Formerly a staff archivist for the National Archives and a senior intelligence analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, Rudgers challenges the popular view that the Agency was principally the brainchild of former OSS chief William J. Donovan. Rather, he explains, the centralization of intelligence was part of a larger reorganization of the US government during the transition from World War II to the Cold War. He also documents how it swerved from its original purpose of guarding against sneak attacks to taking part in clandestine activity against the Soviet Union. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

State of War

Author : James Risen
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2006-01-05
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780743297578

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State of War by James Risen Pdf

With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we still might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of current debate. This hidden history involves domestic spying, abuses of power, and outrageous operations. It includes a CIA that became caught in a political cross fire that it could not withstand, and what it did to respond. It includes a Defense Department that made its own foreign policy, even against the wishes of the commander in chief. It features a president who created a sphere of deniability in which his top aides were briefed on matters of the utmost sensitivity -- but the president was carefully kept in ignorance. State of War reveals this hidden history for the first time, including scandals that will redefine the Bush presidency. James Risen has covered national security for The New York Times for years. Based on extraordinary sources from top to bottom in Washington and around the world, drawn from dozens of interviews with key figures in the national security community, this book exposes an explosive chain of events: Contrary to law, and with little oversight, the National Security Administration has been engaged in a massive domestic spying program. On such sensitive issues as the use of torture, the administration created a zone of deniability: the president's top advisors were briefed, but the president himself was not. The United States actually gave nuclear-bomb designs to Iran. The CIA had overwhelming evidence that Iraq had no nuclear weapons programs during the run-up to the Iraq war. They kept that information to themselves and didn't tell the president. While the United States has refused to lift a finger, Afghanistan has become a narco-state, supplying 87 percent of the heroin sold on the global market. These are just a few of the stories told in State of War. Beyond these shocking specifics, Risen describes troubling patterns: Truth-seekers within the CIA were fired or ignored. Long-standing rules were trampled. Assassination squads were trained; war crimes were proposed. Yet for all the aggressiveness of America's spies, a blind eye was turned toward crucial links between al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, among other sensitive topics. Not since the revelations of CIA and FBI abuses in the 1970s have so many scandals in the intelligence community come to light. More broadly, Risen's secret history shows how power really works in George W. Bush's presidency.

The Secret World

Author : Christopher Andrew
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 1019 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2018-09-04
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780300240528

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The Secret World by Christopher Andrew Pdf

“A comprehensive exploration of spying in its myriad forms from the Bible to the present day . . . Easy to dip into, and surprisingly funny.” —Ben Macintyre in The New York Times Book Review The history of espionage is far older than any of today’s intelligence agencies, yet largely forgotten. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the most successful WWII intelligence agency, were completely unaware that their predecessors had broken the codes of Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars and those of Spain before the Spanish Armada. Those who do not understand past mistakes are likely to repeat them. Intelligence is a prime example. At the outbreak of WWI, the grasp of intelligence shown by US President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was not in the same class as that of George Washington during the Revolutionary War and eighteenth-century British statesmen. In the first global history of espionage ever written, distinguished historian and New York Times–bestselling author Christopher Andrew recovers much of the lost intelligence history of the past three millennia—and shows us its continuing relevance. “Accurate, comprehensive, digestible and startling . . . a stellar achievement.” —Edward Lucas, The Times “For anyone with a taste for wide-ranging and shrewdly gossipy history—or, for that matter, for anyone with a taste for spy stories—Andrew’s is one of the most entertaining books of the past few years.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Remarkable for its scope and delightful for its unpredictable comparisons . . . there are important lessons for spymasters everywhere in this breathtaking and brilliant book.” —Richard J. Aldrich, Times Literary Supplement “Fans of Fleming and Furst will delight in this skillfully related true-fact side of the story.” —Kirkus Reviews “A crowning triumph of one of the most adventurous scholars of the security world.” —Financial Times Includes illustrations

Directorate S

Author : Steve Coll
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 784 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2018-02-06
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780525557302

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Directorate S by Steve Coll Pdf

Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11 Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan. Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.

The Way of the Knife

Author : Mark Mazzetti
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2013-04-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781101617946

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The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti Pdf

“The new American way of war is here, but the debate about it has only just begun. In The Way of the Knife, Mr Mazzetti has made a valuable contribution to it.” —The Economist A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s riveting account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies. This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime. Mark Mazzetti tracks an astonishing cast of characters on the ground in the shadow war, from a CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played to the chain-smoking Pentagon official running an off-the-books spy operation, from a Virginia socialite whom the Pentagon hired to gather intelligence about militants in Somalia to a CIA contractor imprisoned in Lahore after going off the leash. At the heart of the book is the story of two proud and rival entities, the CIA and the American military, elbowing each other for supremacy. Sometimes, as with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, their efforts have been perfectly coordinated. Other times, including the failed operations disclosed here for the first time, they have not. For better or worse, their struggles will define American national security in the years to come.

The Secret History of the American Empire

Author : John Perkins
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 052595015X

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The Secret History of the American Empire by John Perkins Pdf

In this riveting memoir, bestselling author Perkins details his former role as an economic hit man. This stunning, behind-the-scenes expos reveals a conspiracy of corruption that has fueled instability and anti-Americanism around the globe.